From the President

Dr. Andrew P. Roth, President

Dear friends of Notre Dame College,

You all know that Notre Dame College is not about numbers. Notre Dame is about the students. Notre Dame is about values. Notre Dame is about the mission to educate a diverse population in the liberal arts for personal, professional and global responsibility.

But you also know that without a budget there’s no institution; and without the institution there’s no mission. While the College is not about numbers, numbers permit us to do what we do.

Notre Dame is long past the days of being a small business operation. We have an operating volume of $43 million. Notre Dame just recruited the largest incoming class in the College’s history with 489 new students. We have a total enrollment of nearly 2,200 students. Notre Dame is a job creator while other businesses are laying off. We now have more than 250 employees.

In terms of numbers, the state of the College is very good.

But the important question is, “Why do we do this?” We do what we do because we believe in the mission set forth by the Sisters of Notre Dame. We do what we do because we believe in our students. We do what we do because we believe in diversity and opportunity.

Notre Dame is the most diverse college in Ohio. One fourth of our students are minority students and nearly half of them are not Catholic. They come from 20 different states and a dozen different countries. Notre Dame is an opportunity college. More than half of our students are the first in their families to go to college. In short, the NDC student body is a microcosm of our country. We are America.

Notre Dame provides a private, values-based, Catholic education in the liberal arts to students who might otherwise not have access to such an experience. More than $16 million of our operating volume is given right back to our students in the form of financial aid. We have been able to do that over the years thanks to our successes in enrollment. In fact, Notre Dame is one of the fastest growing colleges in the United States.

But for us to responsibly continue on that path, we now need to do in fundraising what we did in enrollment. In order for us to increase full-time enrollment from 1,300 to 1,600 in the next three to five years, and to update and build the facilities to accommodate that growth, we need to raise $10 million.

That is an ambitious goal, but, as Daniel Burnham, the great architect who built Chicago and Cleveland, once said, “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood.” What Burnham meant was that only big plans inspire people. At Notre Dame, we are trying to make big plans; plans that inspire our students, employees, alumni and friends. Those plans include renovating the aging Regina facilities, creating a presence on Green Road and building an athletic complex. Our goal is to become one of the finest colleges in the Great Lakes region; and we are well on our way to making that a reality.

With your support we can dare to dream, dare to seek, dare to create, dare to dare. This is what we inspire our students to do as well. We help them discover what their mission is. We help them define their vision for the future. We help them figure out what kind of person they want to become. If all we did were to help them earn a living, we would have failed. Life is not about numbers. Life is about values.